NASA telescope spies 3 new potentially habitable (and close) planets

NASA’s Kepler telescope has its eye on three new potentially habitable planets. At a distance of 150 light years, the three “lukewarm” bodies are among the closest candidates for habitable life.

The star they orbit is known m as EPIC201367065. It’s an M-class
dwarf about half the mass and size of our own Sun. It’s a little
colder too. But at a trillion-and-a-half kilometers away
(930,000,000 miles) it makes the top 10 list of our closest
presumably habitable systems.

One of the three planets discovered is particularly exciting to
scientists, but the rest of our gadgets are still to do their
analyzing and the discovery is then to be handed over to the
Hubble telescope for a more intricate look.

"A thin atmosphere made of nitrogen and oxygen has allowed
life to thrive on Earth. But nature is full of surprises. Many
exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission are enveloped by
thick, hydrogen-rich atmospheres that are probably incompatible
with life as we know it," Ian Crossfield of the University
of Arizona, who lead the study, said of the January 6 discovery.

"Most planets we have found to date are scorched. This system
is the closest star with lukewarm transiting planets," Erik
Petigura, who discovered the planets while analyzing data NASA
provided to astronomers, added.

One of the planets caught Petigura’s attention in particular –
the farthermost one, which has a strong chance of being rocky,
like Earth. For the space scientist, this “means this planet
could have the right temperature to support liquid water
oceans.”

It took several steps for the confirmation to take place. After
Petigura analyzed the light curve data provided by NASA, the
scientists set about feeding coordinates into some of the most
advanced telescopes – in Chile, Hawaii and California. This
allowed them to establish the host star’s radius, mass,
temperature and age.

What allowed the team to use the telescopes was the relatively
close distance. One can say with certainty in these situations
that a star’s brightness will give further clues to determining
things like similarity to the chemical composition in Earth’s own
atmosphere.

From then on, one can make an educated guess if life is possible.

Up next come the more advanced telescopes. The Hubble telescope
will soon start establishing the molecular composition of the
star’s atmosphere and that of the planets around it.

The Kepler mission is NASA’s finest attempt yet to use
cutting-edge technology for photographing and measuring light
changes in distant worlds. This data is remarkable in its ability
to reveal planetary secrets at distances we can barely imagine.